Many traditional cultures regard the heart, situated at the center of the torso, as the body’s principal organ, having special processing powers directed to emotion. A heart-felt sensation is regarded as irreducible truth because emotions can’t be wrong. Indeed, the passions, as emotions are also called in their extremity, are something to be harnessed as motivation, at least until they run afoul and have to be restrained. For instance, a charismatic can inspire or inflame the passions and lead people along unwise paths.

In the modern industrial world, however, the eye and the perceptual faculty it provides has usurped the heart as the principal organ, at least in terms of cognition (ignoring the fact that the brain is the actual processor). The primacy of vision can even be seen (read: understood) in terms used to describe two major eras in Western history: The Dark Ages and The Enlightenment. Such visual metaphors stretch much further back in time, but the emergence from darkness into the light — the overarching story of modernity, religious salvation, and techno-utopianism — is clearly a central feature of Western thinking. For example, in the late 18th century, the U.S. incorporated symbology tracing back to Egyptian antiquity, namely, The Eye of Providence, into the Great Seal of the United States, which even now is displayed on currency shown at left (detail from the one dollar bill). It is noteworthy that, similar to emotional emanations of the heart, the eye is depicted with rays or beams shooting out in all directions, suggesting its other name, The All-Seeing Eye, its view being omnidirectional. That the function of the eye could be understood as both a receiver/processor and projector was apparently well-known long before modern physics revealed that the observer influences the observed by the mere act of observation.

Another version, one of many, actually, can be seen at right. Think of the eye’s function as the light on a miner’s hat, illuminating whatever the wearer brings into view. Much more than the heart, which is responsive and far less prone to intentional direction, the eye can cast its view upon whatever one elects at any moment, bringing the observed into awareness, into the mind, and into focus. (It’s no surprise then that poor eyesight — poor focus — makes for fuzzy thinking. Those who can’t see well uncorrected have diminished powers of observation.) This metaphor may be more accurate than the all-seeing eye for an important reason: a large percentage of information gathered by the eye is discarded. The eye’s narrow point of focus is a relatively small portion of the entire visual field; the rest is peripheral. If this were not so, conscious awareness would be subject to stimulus overload from just one perceptual channel. Other senses compete for attention (especially kinethesia), further limiting what can be brought into conscious awareness at any one time. This limitation is sometimes called the bandwidth of consciousness, a sort of built-in bottleneck.

Another telling expression of the eye’s power of projection is found in the superhero genre, where good guys and bad guys alike frequently possess the ability to shoot lasers, x-rays, or power rays from their eyes. Everyone has experienced the similar if less hoary effect of a withering look (or the hairy eyeball), which may signal an underlying emotional state but is understood more commonly as an aggressive or intimidating behavior. With superpower eyebeams, eyelines drawn into illustrations connecting the viewers to objects of interest (familiar dotted lines used to track the viewer’s gaze) are thus amplified into beams of intense destructive power. The source of the power is unclear, as with most superpowers, but the fact that it is delivered by a look is an indication of the mythical power behind the eyes, which is known poetically as the window to the soul.

It is not a difficult stretch to suggest that directionality, whether omnidirectional or pinpoint, also brings the world into being in the sense meant by New Age gurus and adherents to theories of quantum reality. At a more mundane level, each of us pursues interests that appeal to us and gain familiarity and expertise accordingly. Subjects that sustain one’s interest and focus are often later distorted through professional bias and cherry-picking support, as when a religious person turns to scripture for justification or a scientist relies solely on data to substantiate an argument or theory. This is also what’s meant by the old saw that to someone holding a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail to be pounded down. After a fashion, tools of thought can become weapons.

One could easily dismiss all this as mere perspectival diversity, where some interpret the world in one fashion while others take different approaches. However, I intuit that something deeper is going on, namely, that a sort of blindness develops when one learns how to see the world primarily or even exclusively from one perspective. Everything can’t be illuminated at once, so where one turns one’s attention and the habits of mind that develop from focused expertise can render the viewer/thinker fundamentally blind to other valid interpretations. More specifically, to the capitalist, the wholesale commodification of human activity as well as the world’s resources makes it so that the only possible view is in terms of money and/or profits. Such folks aren’t starry-eyed dreamers, they’re dollar-eyed gluttons. And to them, collateral effects such as increasing class tensions, social upheaval (and eventual regime/institutional collapse), pollution, resource degradation (e.g., overfishing or soil depletion), and climate change lie outside their scope/view, making denial easy to assert without lying outright. This doesn’t excuse conscientious blindness to reality, but if one is ever dumbfounded that others can’t see what seems glaringly obvious, this explanation might being to shed some light on why.

Addendum: Even in the portion of the blogosphere taking collapse as its subject, bloggers adopt highly idiosyncratic approaches that fit their styles, interests, and expertise. For an incomplete survey, let me summarize a few. (I could be wrong about some of these. Don’t hesitate to correct me.)

At The Collapse of Industrial Civilization, the focus seems to be chronicling the onset of collapse with copious citation of news reports and other blog entries. The news is sometimes cited as support when a summary or report of a scientific finding, but more often, the news is soundly derided because journalists in the MSM are obviously carrying water for the military-industrial-corporate complex.

At The Spiral Staircase, though not solely a doomblog, the focus lies with causes and available responses (even if only in attitude) related to the culture surrounding or giving rise to eventual collapse.

At Clusterfuck Nation, the focus is on exposing corruption at the heart of empire, with a healthy self-awareness on the part of the blogger and reticence to engage commentators in dialogue.

At now-defunct Deer Hunting with Jesus, the approach was a wickedly colorful combination of memoir and explanation of the redneck perspective, which accounts for a surprising percentage of the population that barely had a voice in the conversation until Joe Bageant appeared.

At Dark Ages America, the focus is chronicling the waning of empire, with special attention paid to the utter stupidity of the American public and mining cultural history for reasons how Americans in particular got to be such corrupt and incompetent buffoons.

At Nature Bats Last, with diverse content, many guest bloggers, and a robust commentariat, the focus is wide-angle, with the result that NBL is often in the vanguard with respect to recognizing developments and drawing sound conclusions.

At How to Save the World, the focus has shifted from organizing grass-roots, transitional, and intentional communities to a full-on retreat into inner life following the recognition that absolutely nothing is going to prepare us for or stem the tide coming in.

At TomDispatch.com, the focus lies with nonmainstream reporting on mostly American politics and society.

At TruthDig, commondreams, and elsewhere, (specifically) Chris Hedges reports primarily on political and military corruption and scandal.

At Club Orlov, the focus lies with comparisons to previous regime collapses and prepping.

At The Automatic Earth, the focus lies with financial analysis in light of anticipated upheavals.

There are many other blogs and bloggers who go unmentioned, but it’s clear that a huge amount of information is out there, hand-picked and curated from a variety of perspectives. In addition, the comments section behind each, if not populated by trolls and deniers, are often as worthwhile as the posts themselves. An odd sense of community comes from connecting (virtually) with others who share a perspective that still eludes the so-called great unwashed masses, who are still gorging themselves (typically through debt spending) on the bounty of the modern age. Whether by innate character or conditioning, some of us never required much by way of convincing. The science and larger historical trajectory becomes fundamentally clear upon even modest inquiry. Chronicling our descent only reinforces conclusions reached intellectually, namely, that the path before us is unavoidable. Dissenters may assert that conclusion is pessimistic, defeatist, fatalistic, or nihilistic (is there a continuum for negativity?), but with so much going wrong with the world, evidence overwhelms denial.

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65 thoughts on “The Point of Focus”

What I’d like to do is create short stories which act as parables for the modern age. I’ve done a few dystopic posts of the future here at this site. This seems to be the most powerful way to get intended messages across rather than merely posting news clippings which still has worth in itself, but not as powerful as a good short story.

I don’t know what message there is to get across any more. Most of my life, I’ve seen every meeting and conversation as an opportunity to convey a message because since my teens I’ve been politically committed. I’ve always had strong ideas in my head. I used to hitch hike all around the country, and tell the poor unfortunate captive chauffeurs what was wrong with the world and what they ought to be doing to change things.
I’ve raked through all the -isms, looking for clues, from Dostoevsky to Lenin to Hayek to Kerouac, etc, etc, there’s not many names that can be mentioned, where I don’t have some idea where they are coming from.

It’s only last year when I gave up, and joined Daniel on NBL, the whole effort is pointless now. I do what I do, to maintain my self-respect and integrity, my moral stance. And partly, it’s just habit. But I don’t see any message as having any practical purpose, in the sense of a political and social agenda.
It’s fine to speak on a personal level, to individuals, but amidst the herd of 7 billion, stampeding towards the cliff, it’s just sharing a few moments to swap stories, rather than building an effective change of direction.

My second wife had an old grand mother nearly ninety, who spent more than three years writing her autobiography. She’d had an interesting life, I didn’t read it, but she told me a few snippets. Well worth publishing. She was a simple working class woman, a socialist, had several husbands. She had strong views on politics. I asked her once who she thought had been the best Prime Minister. She said they were all rubbish. She quite liked Bonar Law. I’d never heard of him. Anyway, she completed the manuscript, gave it to some woman to type, who left it on a bus, and it was lost. Not found.
The grand mother began to re-write, but didn’t get far before she died from throat cancer and other things. So her whole life’s story was gone. Nobody will know it.

Does it matter ? Dust in the wind…

Pleasingly, there were very many butterflies in my field today, 7 different species, 2 uncommon ones.

When I say message, it’s not a particularly good one. We live in dystopic times wherein a campaign to sustain the unsustainable is being waged – destroying fresh water aquifers with fracking, piping in tar sands from Canada, greenwashing our destructive industrial mode of living with so-called ‘renewable’ energy, suicidal and delusional tehno-optimism, waging war on the world to maintain Empire, destroying the planet’s air conditioner (Arctic) with GHG’s from industrial activity and then racing in to exploit that region’s resources, mainstream media spinning the catastrophe of anthropocentric climate change in order to maintain business-as-usual, etc. The end result of this futile and foolish campaign will be that mankind and most life on Earth will be dust in the wind, just like your grandmother-in-law’s lost autobiography. Such a message is unpopular for industrial carbon man who has grown accustomed to his 24/7 TV shows, corn-syrup sweetened and processed food, and two ton metal/plastic machines of roadkill transportation, but that is my message. The folly of modern man is that he believes he can maintain this high energy, high consumption way of life. Take for instance a current post at “Climate Denial Crock of the Week”: Could Suburbia Be Sustainable?.

This past two months we have had plenty of rain in Northern Arizona. The mountains are green; lots of flowers and growth, but this could all be tinder next year when the vagaries of a mangled Jet Stream bring a heat dome over this region that ignites theses forests into another megafire.

Sad story. But, even despite all your experience, perhaps there is the practical solution – one which would indeed be “an effective change of direction”, in your term. Could it be that you didn’t see it because, well, systems around you made it impossible to see? Could it be that i, not being a part of those systems, and few others like James Lovelock, see it now? Could it be that it would actually work?

The thing is described among other things i wrote in this topic of one of good forums out there: http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,447.msg11883.html#msg11883 . There lots of words, and i did many typos typing in a hurry, but it seems you got some time, so may be read what i and others said there. Note, initial few posts are NOT about this possible solution i talk about; we went off-topic there, in fact. The link here should bring you to the 1st post which contains significant details about the solution i am talking about.

I am extremely very interested to hear what you, ufvfuql, would think about it. People with experience and knowledge of the scope you said you have – are excellent critics. If you’d be commenting about it, then please do not spare me; if there are any flaws or defects with the plan i am talking about there (well, not directly, but i bet you can get the general idea very easy). Straight and “as it is”, please. I will only appreciate it.

I read it. Surgut must have been an interesting place. I don’t know what to say. You’ve thought about it a lot. I think it’s impossible to know how things will play out in any detail because of all the variables. USA has gone insane. Israel is insane. The corporations and banks are beyond control. I agree with most of your analysis.

Ideally, the good guys could come together into communities and say ‘Here we live by these rules’, e.g. permaculture principles, like the Bishnoi, like the Kogi, but in practice it’s almost impossible because existing powers won’t permit any autonomy.
But I can imagine any such community that became established would attract people and grow, like

But nothing survives global irradiation and climate chaos, so it’s a fanciful idea, rather than a practical one. And of course the greatest danger is always other humans who want to invade or take whatever they think they want, so then it’s back to the same old armed conflicts there have been throughout history.

I don’t think there are any solutions or answers or workable strategies. I don’t even care about the humans. Most of them are pretty disgusting, self-serving, self-regarding, small-minded, ignorant, petty creatures. The higher up the social scale one goes, the more loathsome they seem to be.

I think the pyramid with the eye thing is interesting. I don’t recall for sure without checking whether it goes back to the very earliest of the Sumerian cities, but I’m sure that most of them had a central ziggurat that housed the goddess at the top, attended by priests. So I imagine it was the focal point for all the inhabitants.
Turns up again much later at Babylon, and there are similar structures in Central America, Peru, China, and elsewhere, so it seems somewhat archetypal.
Bentham’s Panopticon is now the NSA, which I suppose is symbolic of the ‘Shining City on a Hill’, in the delusional alternative reality tunnel that those people inhabit.

It doesn’t matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do.

But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.

It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.

The comments by Beckwith are absolutely terrifying. At the peril of the world, the pseudo-scientists in their white towers ignore and deride the direct observations of experts in the field. The IPCC is not even including methane in their forecasts. And the GWP of methane at 150x in the Arctic!!! No wonder the man on the street is starting to take notice of the freaky weather.

I’d like to do a short comment on one single part of this excellent and very important (imho) article – this one:
”
Everything can’t be illuminated at once, so where one turns one’s attention and the habits of mind that develop from focused expertise can render the viewer/thinker fundamentally blind to other valid interpretations. More specifically, to the capitalist, the wholesale commodification of human activity as well as the world’s resources makes it so that the only possible view is in terms of money and/or profits.
”
My comment is: it’s not just true, but it’s most likely true much more than most if not all of us think. I suspect it’s true to tremendous extent. I feel it’s true so much that even those who consiesly try to avoid this – are still mightily affected. There is only one instance in modern culture where i’ve experienced a similar degree of realization about this – it’s the movie “Interstate 60”. The main protagonist of it sees pictures on some boards which only he is able to see – everyone else around him see those boards being blank, completely empty. He is able to see a line of text on a piece of paper, telling him a thing which he doesn’t understand at the moment, – while others look at him as crazy and tell him that that piece of paper is blank, empty. And then there is what perhaps is the best explanation of the idea i’ve ever seen – this “test” in the hospital. Say, if you never seen it, – try to see what’s going on _before_ it’ll be explained. Me, i failed to. Everyone i know, also failed to. Most likely you will fail to do it, too – or did fail when you were watching this movie for the 1st time. It’s “normal” to fail at this, though. Not “Ok”, surely not – it’s the tragedy that we humans fail at such things, – but it’s normal. Nothing to be specifically ashamed about; and useful, in order to realize how massively incorrect most of us usually are – even many, if not all, of al lthe most capable intellectually and ethically people.

I have tried to make this site a panopticon for seeking out the wretched truth and it does work when I can find the time to peruse the information. Without a doubt the intelligence apparatus of Empire knows what’s coming. To deal realistically with the unfolding catastrophe would require a wholesale restructuring of society and the base of power. This is anathema to Empire and its elite, so they’d rather deal with it the only way they know how – damage control and faith in techo-fixes(geoengineering).

I am just being silly for a single line, of course. Guess it’s defensive reaction, eh. But at least makes me smile. Perhaps not just me, too. So, typed the thought in. Taking things unseriously for a moment once in a while – helps. Like a breath of a fresh air, so to say. See, this time, it’s not a visual one, i’m getting better! 😀

Well, well, well. A person has to use their common sense and read between the lines.
When SkeptikalScience puts itself forward as a neutral and authoritative voice, as it claims to be, and then refuses to publish Paul Beckwith’s points, Chris Colose is not just ‘being conservative’, in Guy McPherson’s polite term, he’s being a cowardly disgrace to science.

We’ve seen Gavin Schmidt play the same game, like some slick lawyer, using sophistry to try and justify his despicable dismissal of the work of Shakhova and Semiletov, who have been going out on the ice every year for more than a decade to see what’s happening with their own eyes.

ALL the points HE made have been shot to pieces.

Both Schmidt and Colose mostly rely on Archer’s study, which never pointed to the risk from the ESA sea at all, and Archer writes joint papers with the chief scientist from ExxonMobil, so how credible is HE as an objective source for anything, I wonder.

Seems to me, if SkeptikalScience and RealClimate want to retain any authority for REAL science, they are going to have to raise their standards a lot higher, because something stinks.

And when Beckwith points out how it could happen, Colose, rather than argue or refute, or agree to differ, just refuses to publish.

The permafrost layer that is supposedly holding down the methane is not a solid uniform slab, like concrete. It’s got unfrozen patches of organic deposits sandwiched in, called taliks, it’s got valleys, where rivers used to flow when it was land, where there could be landslides, as the sea bed becomes destabilised, because instead of being around freezing as it has been for 5000 years, it’s now suddenly 7 deg C. It’s seismically active.

But worst of all, these damn people, Archer, Schmidt, Colose, et al, are all making statements based on their theoretical imaginings, and discrediting the accounts of reputable scientists who have actually been to the site every year for years and years and SEEN what’s happening. They are like the fucking people on the bridge of the Titanic, ‘There can’t be a hole, it’s only an iceberg, there’s no defendable way to explain water coming into this ship…’

It does not need ALL OF IT to come out at once, just a small amount, 1 %, 2 %, and we’re GONE, because that doubles the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

But that’s not really the thing. It vastly increases the local heating of the Arctic, which means that MORE methane comes out of that area, faster, and adds to all the other feedbacks we have already. Over ten years , it brings forward the 2 deg C by a decade or more, completely negating any efforts anybody makes to try mitigate the warming we already have… as if anybody was actually trying to do anything… sigh…

It MIGHT NOT be the killer blow. But the way these people bend over backwards to play it down, even to the point of what I’d call corrupting science, is totally inexcusable, totally disgusting.

Not surprising to me, though. I did notice during last few years, repeatedly, that both Skeptical Science and mr. Archer are both often giving incorrect data. I even have a feeling that mr. Archer is kind of famous among fair researchers of climate change for being relatively good-quality disinformation crafter when it is climate change and its consequences being the subject of the talk/paper/etc.

Irrespective of the desire of people with vested interests to keep the game going at any cost, there is the general ignorance factor.

Yesterday I had a meeting with a senior council officer, General Manager Infrastructure, responsible for: ‘water and wastes, roading, property/asset management, quality assurance, parks, emergency management and business continuance’.

He had never heard of M King Hubbert or Peak Oil. He was unaware that global extraction had peaked, and that the global economic system is being propped up by unconventional oil. He seemed rather shocked when I presented him with the list of nations that had peaked, the year of peak and the decline rates. He was unaware that EROIE is well below what it was 100 years ago and that we are sliding down the EROEI cliff.

He did not know how the money system works.

He had no significant knowledge of carbon dioxide or methane. He had never thought about making cement or making steel as being major sources of carbon dioxide.

He is well qualified in his field, but until our meeting had no idea about anything important. .

Forgetting everything else, I pointed out to him that collapse of current arrangements is inevitable just on the basis of lack of liquid fuels because all the easy oil has been extracted and the oil that remains is difficult to extract. The Deepwater Horizon event and fracking indicate the level of desperation to maintain supply (and maintain cashflow).

I pointed out that the overall picture has been evident since the 1950s, and in 50 years nothing has been done to prevent catastrophe. I pointed out that collapse of current arrangements is certain within a decade, and very likely within 3 years. And that every day that passes without action results in the predicament getting worse.

Although he was very receptive to everything I said, I do not expect Jim Wilson to do anything different next week or even next month. I gave him the title of the book (TEW) he needs to read. I doubt he will.

Poor guy. I wonder how his brain will cope. He’ll probably have horrible nightmares as he struggles to suppress all that information that he cannot compute 🙂

I know exactly what you mean. Imagine being in charge of caring for a nature reserve, perhaps one of the most precious in the entire country, and the bureaucrat who runs the trust, that manages all the county nature reserves and who holds the purse strings and tells me what I can and cannot do, has never actually been to the site in the 12 years that they have owned it, yet talks about it in public as if he was there every week… the guy’s whole day was spent bullshitting people, everything he ever said was made up, fake, selling an image, a total fraud.

July in Taranak was about 1oC warmer than normal, which doesn’t sound much but was enough to mean no frosts. Tomatoes in my recently-constructed greenhouse kept growing and fruiting through the winter. My almond trees burst into blossom a few days ago.

When I meet people they comment on how wonderful the weather is (I was cycling in shorts and a tee shirt a few days ago and I got hot mowing lawns an hour ago). It is still winter (June, July, August).

It’s all getting very ‘interesting’ for the 0.1% who are awake.

It is abundantly clear that the vast majority will learn the hard way.

Abundantly clear – yes. Vast majority – yes. Hard way – yes. “Learn” – err… i wouldn’t be so sure. I expect majority of this vast majority to die without learning, to be honest.

If you’d think it does not matter, – well it does. If only vast majority would learn – even a hard way, – may be they’d make a last-ditch effort, may be they’d help a bit just before perishing. But no. They, i bet, won’t learn, and to their end, all they do will be to harm Gaia even more. But i do not blame them. They can’t learn, because they are made unable to learn. Billions who were and are being born to be a cog in huge machine of modern industrial civilization. Raised to be such a cog. Educated to be one. Controlled to remain one. How can they learn?

The point is not blaming nor pity, though. The point is we need to know what’s coming and what to expect. At least, for me.

Abrupt climate change. It is happening today, big time. The northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation system is doing its own thing, without the guidance of a stable jet stream. The jet stream is fractured into meandering and stuck streaked segments, which are hoovering up water vapor and directing it day after day to unlucky localized regions, depositing months or seasons worth of rain in only a few days, turning these locales into water worlds and trashing all infrastructure like houses, roads, train tracks and pipelines. Creating massive sinkholes and catastrophic landslides. And climate change is only getting warmed up.

In the Arctic methane is coming out of the thawing permafrost. Both on land and under the ocean on the sea floor. The Yedoma permafrost in Siberia is now belching out methane at greatly accelerated rates due to intense warming. The collapsing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is exposing the open ocean to greatly increased solar absorption and turbulent mixing from wave action due to persistent cyclonic activity. Massive cyclonic activity will trash large portions of the sea ice if positioned to export broken ice via the Fram Strait.

Mike, even if so, then i say it’s better to keep trying to survive, till very end. In hope for a miracle, if nothing better, – and to honor all our ansetors. They came through ice ages, and black plague, and world wars, and lots of other tough things. It wasn’t exactly easy, you know? So even if only out of respect to our ancestors, we gotta keep trying.

How can these people be so callous? Just as the Japanese (men) overlook the disaster of Fukushima and keep playing the corporate energy game, so too in every country (it seems) the powers that be, including the lame stream media, keeps everyone distracted with non-news (infotainment), sports, fashion, mowing our fucking lawns and shopping (to name but a few) but never utter the truth – condemning us all to hell on Earth in our lifetimes. i’m convinced that politicians are there to slow down any attempt to change things from the status quo. I’ve been collecting signatures on street corners all summer and got 1 state politician to sign-on to legislation for a moratorium on fracking until the companies who do it can be more “environmentally friendly” and safer.

I used to say that politics moves at a glacial pace, but now glaciers actually move faster! We’re so fucked.

I suppose the cancer is consuming fossil fuels and growing today, well, I’m sure it is. Making a better life for everyone. A better life? A systematic life evolved to process fossil fuels where designing, building, maintaining and using technological infrastructure is your life. This temporary and malignant deviation from the normal path of organic evolution will come to an end.

It’s not just the relatively high EROEI of fossil fuels that have allowed this growth and organization, but the exponential consumption of all available resource gradients that have fueled technological systematicity on the scale of human beings. Sipping oil at 100:1 EROEI would be inadequate to produce the so called civilization we have, we had to devour it like ravenous hyenas ripping apart a carcass on the African savannah. It’s not only the quality, but the quantity that was important in our development and now, the earth-warming waste that has accumulated in the atmosphere at unprecedented rates is warming the earth much faster than any time previously. And that speed is what will result in a sudden release of methane. A release over 20,000 years is quite different from a release over 100 years just as the consumption of fossil fuels over 20,000 years versus 200 would have been inadequate to make our carnival land sprout from the earth in all of its glory.

And all of the Ozymandian knuckleheads with their skyscrapers, yachts, and thoroughbreds will soon be hung out to dry in the hot desert sands – forever.

Just how big is a quadrillion? In yen, as Bloomberg News explains, the amount is larger than the economies of Germany, France, and Britain—combined.

Now that Japan has smashed through the quadrillion ceiling, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will likely feel even more pressure to raise the country’s consumption tax. “Ballooning public debt underlines the need for Abe to push for a sales-tax increase,” Long Hanhua Wang, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS:LN) in Tokyo, told Bloomberg News. “This is a minimum policy requirement for his government.”

Moody’s (MCO) yesterday highlighted one of the threats of Japan’s red ink, which is more than double the country’s GDP. The rating agency warned of “a tipping point for creditworthiness” that could destabilize the Japanese financial system. Without sustainable economic growth, “the government’s willingness to expand its deficit and attempt to inflate the economy into a recovery will be of limited effect,” Moody’s warned. “At some point, investors may demand a premium for funding Japan’s growing debt.”

“…Noriko Hama, an economist at Doshisha University in Kyoto, argues that much of Japan’s stimulus money has gone into creating a stock market bubble, much like that of the late 1980s, while ordinary consumer prices continue to fall.

“I would rename it ‘absolutely bad economics,’ ” she says dryly. “I think it is just a ploy to create a bubble economy, in the hope, I suppose, that people will forget the deflationary reality that is pressuring them.”

Hama says Abe’s policies — which she characterizes as supply-side neoconservatism — are designed to preserve the collusion between government and “Japan Inc.” that has been a hallmark of the Liberal Democratic Party’s rule for decades.

It’s very much Rip van Winkle economics,” Hama says, “dreaming about the days of strong exports, supported by a cheap yen; economic growth being sustained by public works spending, government picking winners and losers among industries.”

She also notes that Abe has promised deregulation that will make it easier for companies to fire workers, or turn them into temporary workers, who now account for 38 percent of the labor force. They often do the same work as full-time workers, but without equal pay and benefits.
Some prominent foreign economists have hailed Abenomics as a model for developed economies to follow.

But Hama says that Abenomics threaten to make a very few people wealthy, while leaving most ordinary Japanese behind, and she says that’s not something worth emulating.”

‘Those who rely on fossil fuels for transportation, heating, and the like can perhaps take comfort from the fact that oil and natural gas will not run out soon, as was predicted by many energy analysts in the early years of this century.’

Those who understand Peak Oil have never talked about oil running out soon. The whole emphasis of discussion has always been about the rate of extraction peaking and going into decline, along with a greater amount of energy and resource being necessary to extract the oil and gas that remain underground (under sea).

The Peak Oil movement has been a failure, not because the ideas were incorrect. but because of the failure of people to listen to what was being said.

Right now the ‘hot news’ is demand destruction. In the US, oil consumption has been falling for several years, as the economy slowly implodes, down from 21 million barrels a day to around 18 million barrels a day, I believe.

I have seen no figures for Spain, or Italy, or others of many nations falling off the cliff. However, when there is 25% unemployment and when most traditional industries have fled to China, it would a fair assumption that oil consumption is down by a huge percentage from peak.

Of course, demand destruction in older industrial nations has freed-up oil for China and India to consume in the short term..

It is abundantly clear that most markets are now heavily manipulated, either by rigging of interest rates and the printing of ‘funny money’, or by high-frequency trading -superfast computers bidding and cancelling bids at the nanosecond level- or cartels agreeing to ‘work the market’. The current price of oil bears no relationship whatsoever to its value. But significantly higher prices would demolish the global economic system, just as higher government bond rates would.

ulvfuql, you said, above:
”
But nothing survives global irradiation and climate chaos, so it’s a fanciful idea, rather than a practical one. And of course the greatest danger is always other humans who want to invade or take whatever they think they want, so then it’s back to the same old armed conflicts there have been throughout history.

I don’t think there are any solutions or answers or workable strategies. I don’t even care about the humans. Most of them are pretty disgusting, self-serving, self-regarding, small-minded, ignorant, petty creatures. The higher up the social scale one goes, the more loathsome they seem to be.
”
I happen to know some facts which oppose what you said here.

1. Irradiation. If you meant by this large quantities of radioactive pollution, which most likely will happen after large power grids will permanently shut down (from nuclear power plants and other reactors remaining without proper maintenance for any long), – this will definitely be a big problem in many regions, however, look how closed zone around Chernobil is nowadays. It lives. Not just lives – with humans gone, plants and animals there are much more diverse than before 1986 accident. If you meant scorching heat of the Sun, much captured and amplified by greenhouse gases increase and stratospheric ozone layer depletion, – this one is worse, as it will indeed “kill” much of land surface mainly through excessive evapotranspiration (is this the correct spelling of the term in english?). However, subpolar and polar regions are places where Sun _never_ gets high above horizon (and thus rays from Sun are to get much longer path through the athmosphere, thus losing much of intensity when striking the surface), and where there are and will be “polar nights” – periods of very low (or, none, for polar) insolation. It is in those regions where moisture content in the soil will remain high year-around. And where theer is soil and water in it, plants grow. Even huge forest fires in borel forests do not cancel that: fire kill much of the forest, but not all life; plants, including trees, are growing back after forest fires “by itself”. It takes decades for new forest to emerge, during which time local human communities may well suffer without full-time forest support, but still, forests do get back up from fires, – scientists even burned a small island somewhere in Siberia some time in 1990s to learn how it happens, dozen years after young, few-meter-tall at best, trees were all other the place. Did you mean something else by “irradiation”? Why exactly “nothing survives” it?

2. Climate chaos. I wouldn’t say “nothing” survives it, but most things indeed do not. However, humans are sapient. This means that they are harder to get rid of than cockroaches. And since humans do get some other species for survival (like, domesticated animals, crops, egetables, etc), – humans care about those other species too. In short, i tend to think that industrial agriculture of large scale (modern huge “complexes” growing mono-cultures, be it plants or animals) will indeed be not sufficiently flexible to adapt to climate chaos while fending off all the other known problems it increasingly clashes with. Small and diverse farms in northern temperate (for now) and subpolar (in the future) regions can also be devastated by climate chaos without very intelligent, careful, quadriple-safety approach – but with such an approach, many of those are quite likely to survive chaotic climate. Can’t be done in modern economic system though, where for most small farmers, each year is usually “last” in terms of food reserves, seeds, money, fertilizers’ reserves etc. But this is one of problems which do have a solution, imho; besides, it won’t be (and even, it is not even now) exactly modern economic system in such a remote and sparsely-populated areas, anyways.

3. Not a practical idea. Oh, man, i don’t pretend nor try to be a “last instance truth” amd “best possible suggestion about what to do”. Sure, i may be mistaken, and probably am, about many details at very least. However, at very least, i am much more practical in my ideas than most others, i think. Any big trouble needs big ideas about how to solve it, i guess; if mine are of at least a minor use, i’ll keep developing them. Besides, if everyone will die, then what does it matter anyways, why not let me keep doing it? I heard it’s a good feeling to “die trying”, – well, at least better feeling than to “die after completely giving up”. Eh? 😀

4. Yes, armed conflicts. One of main difficulties with establishing _any_ productive (in new, tougher, conditions) enterprise. I am hugely amazed how SO many people do gardens, small farms, hydroponics etc in suburbs and even in cities without ANY consideration about security. Darn, as soon as there will be big problems with industrially-made food, all those places ARE going to be looted, with mobs/gangs often killing folks who made these small food-growing places, and often destroying places themselves in the process of looting. This is one of the main reasons why i only talk about REMOTE places in the 1st place. A place being remote means a place being far (physically – dozens, better hundreds miles) from any modern settlement which is larger than a few hundreds souls. You may argue that even to remote places, too many armed people (like surviving parts of the army) and simply refugees would be able to travel too. And i can argue that 1st, if kept sufficiently under the radar, vast majority of the population simply won’t know about those “oases” of small mankind which are to survive, and that 2nd, throughout the history we are being shown again and again how effective guerilla warfire is. Just go read about USSR trying to wage war on Finland in the starting chapters of WW2. USSR failed miserably to guerilla tactics, despite having INSANE advantage in terms of tanks, planes, artillery, numbers of riflemen and naval ships. Or go read about “partizans” in Belorussia in early 1940s – those relatively few men and women, hiding in woods, were able not just to evade nazi forces which occupied all the land around, but more, partizans became major force in the area, at some point they were de-railing more than 50% of all nazi trains going through the area, etc. So you see, i still think that if security is properly taken into serious consideration, if it’s a remote place, and if some men are quite dedicatd to prepare for any possible assault by any external party, making big use of “our land – our fortress, we know every tree here” factor – the chances for their settlement to survive are rather high. Besides, it’ll only be a few years during which security threat will be heavy; afterwards, with most of old-order places (and correspondedly, people and “forces”) being dead, it’ll get much easier. This is what many folks who try to figure out how to live after shutdown of global civilization – are saying, not just me.

5. No care about humans. Well, man, you are not alone! Many of us here, i suspect, agree with you very much when you say that “most” of humans, – are jerks (i’m summing it up, hehe). But, man, what about those few who are not among “most of humans”, – those few who are not jerks, actually? You see, i am talking about those few in the first place, in fact. I sometimes call it “big mankind” and “small makind”. The former is what we have alive today, – most of it being jerks (or worse). The latter is what is worth surviving through all the deepshit the bigmankind is piling up, and surviving for long-long time after. Such a survival – no question about it, – will be either impossible or at least very difficult, due to all the bad things big mankind already have done – and will keep doing, it seems, until it shuts itself down, via climate change it triggered, overexploitation of Earth it does, and internal conflicts. I say that we do not know whether it will be “Very difficult” or “impossible”. You say, it’s the latter. I fail to see any facts which would give me such a certainty. If you know such facts, or have any other rationally sound arguments to back your position up, then please share with me. I am open to new knowledge, always.

6. Yeah, “social scale”. It spoils most people when they become rich. Or to become famous. Or to get any significant power over other humans. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, yeah. Well, can’t be helped. I know the thing and was giving it quite much consideration. One of main consequences is that those few people who are not jerks (or something worse), – are usually quite poor. Not the poorest, though, because they have enough brains not to stay on very lowest step of social ladder, – but usually still slightly below your typical “middle class”. Lack of leadership (for most of us), physical diconnectedness, lack of big pool of free money to start any big project, lack of trust to other people (because most people are, well, jerks), and inability to recognise other “not a jerk!” guy (gal) in the crowds of good pretenders (ones who are jerks, but learned very well how to behave and talk as if they are not jerks), – just a few serious problems related to any project which would try to unite any number of truly serious (about Gaia) people. That’s why i’ve been thinking quite much about how, why and where unification of “not a jerk” people may happen _after_ big mankind shutdown. It’ll be much more obvious who’s who by then. But we’ll lose oh so many souls who could be living responsibly on remnants of this planet – they’ll get killed by some or other process of the crisis of big mankind collapse. Plus, it’ll be many times harder to build any resilient (to rapidly changing conditions and local crises) agriculture and society if the start is _after_ big mankind collapse, i know. Bottom line, yes, it’s very difficult to get truly environmentally responsible people together, even harder to protect such a union against all the corruption, government pressures, etc, – but is there any other even remotely-theoretically-possible, way? I guess there is not. So, “do or die”, simple as that. 🙂

1. I was thinking of ionising radiation from all the nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons and nuclear waste.
I don’t think Chernobyl is very relevant a comparison. It was contained and small compared with the hundreds of power stations which will not be contained and will emit indefinitely into the future.

2. Yes, humans are tough and resilient. However, the entire biosphere will collapse, all the ecosystems unravel, climate becomes completely unpredictable. So what will they eat ? Small numbers in pockets may survive for a long time but eventually the mass extinction event eliminates most living things.

On previous occasions when humans have encountered severe perturbations they have either been able to migrate to liveable zones or they have had time to adapt over many generations and learn new ways to survive. I don’t think either option will be available this time. I think the entire planet will be hostile and it will happen so fast and keep on changing that there will be no chance to develop a culture and pass it on to next generations.

3. I keep reading the ideas of dreamers for utopias, and I have had plenty of my own years ago. Nowadays I only allow myself to think of what is really happening and what the results will be. I don’t have spare mental energy for designing fanciful fairy lands, like colonies on Mars or underground cities that I think have zero chance of ever happening. The internet presents me with such nonsense from others every day, I don’t need to waste time on it.

4. Yes. There’s a random element of chance. Sometimes people hide in obvious places and are overlooked, sometimes people take elaborate precautions that fail because of some tiny incident that was unforeseeable. I think the mega rich with their super bunkers who think they can survive collapse are deluding themselves, just like the French aristocrats did before the Revolution. Ghaddafi had lots of elaborate bunkers that cost billions and still ended up sodomised by a blade. They will be poisoned by their own staff or strangled whilst asleep by their own bodyguards. Once the system collapses no amount of money or threat of violence has any leverage any more.

5. Well, that would be my biggest difference with your position, in that your thread title was ‘highly unlikely’ or something, whereas I’d say that it should be ‘absolutely unavoidable’.
Yes, I’d like it if the good, nice, people who honour nature, who I have known, were to survive, and gather together and make a new culture and live in the way that I believe people should. But that will not happen, will it.
The best example, perhaps, might be the Kogi, who kept to themselves for 400 years, but that doesn’t work if everyone else wrecks the planet.

6. You still have hope that somehow something can be saved out of this mess, and I’m not going to argue that you should not try, because I think everybody should do whatever they think, deep down, is the right thing for them to do.
However, my personal view is that we will get the mass extinction even whatever we do. I think it is unavoidable. I think your argument that we should try to survive to honour the ancestors is interesting. I try to conserve the wildlife for a similar sort of reason. The other species have been through the other extinction events, one way and another, and it is our fault that this one besets them.

Ulvfuql, responding to your previous message, using same numbers for subtopics.

1. Chernobil is quite relevant and suitable as a model, because:
– it was complete meltdown, and complete collapse of containing structure. There is a short video on youtube shot from soviet helicopter where cameraman is directly filming red-hot molten remnants of the ractor’s active zone;
– it remained at this state for many days (if not weeks, don’t remember);
– Chernobil’s reactors are, IIRC, old graphite type; there of course was a massive fire, and with lots of smoke, literally tons of radioactive matherial went up flying. Modern reactors are not as “easy to take off” even in the event of fire, i believe;
– many modern reactors have a very simple system of “passive shutdown”. That is, in an event of permanent loss of grid and backup power, reactor shuts itself – neutron-flow-slowing devices are inserted into the active zone of a reactor under a force of gravity. In working order, they are kept “outside” by things like electromagnets. Cut the power – magnets fail – reactor shuts down on its on. Those won’t suffer “hot” meltdown, large fire and massive radioactive pollution outburst. With time (years, decades, centuries – depends on local events and how well reactors are made) radioactive matherials will certainly leak out – but probalby not up into the air, but down. Still damaging, local water tables get polluted, local flora and fauna gets alot of punch, but not the Chernobil-like;
– while vast majority of closed zone around Chernobil did not get truely huge dosage of radiation, – much of the area in direct vicinity from reactor #4 did. If memory serves, even famous “dead wood” nearby, which was literally killed by astronomic amounts of radiation initially – is now in very promising growth. If a single reactor which went full out can’t effectively “kill” even a few dozens square kilometers for any longer than a couple years, – how you expect few thousands of them to kill not just few thousands, but some millions of square kilometers (which it’d need be for it to be a truly global problem)?
– on top of all arguments here presented, there is another major relief: luckily, nuclear reactors, nuclear waste storage sites and nuclear weapons are not distributed evenly among all land surface of Earth. Maps of nuclear power stations exist (it’s a good idea to get some; i did). There are many regions, especially many in sub-polar and polar parts, where one can find himself being hundreds of miles from anything nuclear. This is good news. Bad news are, some other places have LOTS of nuclear staff. Like, France, or large megapolises of leading nuclear states (only research reactors within city borders are dozens for such megapolises, plus lots of military fission matherial, especially where local anti-missile systems are nearby). Assuming, though, that survivors will be ones in remote subpolar (in the future, even polar) regions, – even bad luck of being downwind from some big radiation outburst will not result in massive death.
– once again on top of all above, there is also the thing about isotopes. The main “punch” of radioactivity is relatively short-lived – big spike in few days after a hot reactor outburst (short-lived lighter isotopes) – those radiate very intensively, but are vanishing in hours/days; then kind of platou of radioactivity levels for a few months (half a year, give or take), by a combination of short-lived ongoing emissions and medium-lived, thus rather intense, isotopes; but then radiation gets down many times rather fast, as the only radioactive thing remaining – are heavier isotopes with long half-life periods (many years to many thousands years). The thing with long-lived ones, like Cesium-137, Stroncium-90, Plutonium etc (possible i confused a numbers here) – is that they radiate very, very low amounts per unit of mass. General rule – the longer half-life period is, the proportionally less radioactive the thing is. That’s how and that’s why initial radiation – days, weeks – after Chernobil was indeed lethal, if close enough to the station (or in areas heavily poured with radioactive rains), but nowadays, it’s not lethal except inside the reactor cover itself, anymore. And, yes, people live in the zone; some never moved out. Some died shortly after the burst, but those who made it through the 1st year – are not dying many times faster than background mortality levels.

By the way, you hear all that from the person who was in Minsk (the capitol of Belorussia) in April 1986. And Minsk was very much downwind from Chernobil. I’ve seen yellow foam on the ground with my own eyes, forming during rains: it was a result from de-activating agent they were spraying, disactivating what they could before radioactive rains hit the capitol of Belorussia. I moved out of Minsk in June 1986, nonetheless (well, my parents moved out, took me with them); family moved to Siberia. And, believe it or not, before then, i was a rather weak child, spent couple months in hospitals (and was in hospital with non-radiation-related ilness when Chernobil popped out); but after the move into Siberia, i was not having any illness for 4 years straight. Not a single cough. Nothing. Caught a flu in 1991, then few more years of flawless practical health. Thus i know 1st-hand that even much raised levels of radiation (which i took in Minsk during that spring of 1986) – do not nesessarily lead to health problems; for me, it didn’t.

We even had a dosimeter (radiation meter) – father bought it shortly after moving to Siberia. It was small oil-industry town, named Langepas. We were living in newly constructed concrete housing in there; it was built by Belorussian workers and with Belorussian matherials (all transported in by railraods) – and my parents knew it’s safer to check our new home, just in case some panel would be made out of radioactively polluted matherials. And, one was. Luckily, it was not in a living room – it was in a passage between living rooms. I’ve been doing couple measurements myself through the years, being quite tech-savvy kid even back then. I definitely remember the device reading 200+ units of radiation (forgot what it was, soviet meters were using some odd, by modern means, units of radioactivity). It was there, steadily, not dropping (possibly a bit of cesium or stroncium in that wall – things with half-gone period long enough for readings to remain constant during a couple years period); while natural (any place outside) radiation levels (background levels) – were detected, by that very same radiation meters, as being 37-38, if memory serves. We rightfully decided that since it’s not in any living room, and since higher readings were only present while measurement is taken less than one meter from that single “hotspot” in the corridor’s wall – it was safe to stay. I lived in that appartment for ~5 years, before moving into another. No problems of any sort with my health, as already mentioned.

One more thing. Long-lived radioactive matherial – is mostly, or even completely, heavy isotopes. This means, those things do sink down with time – and have hard times climbing in the athmosphere. Sure, they get up as a part of soot and other aerosols, emitted by fire or melt; but, in a few years, all that settles down. And then it’s transported by water flaws – some ends up underground, some goes all the way to the ocean floor. The practical use of this knowledge – is understanding that mountains are generally safer. Less long-lived radiation will ever make it there, and what make it, sooner will go away (downstream), – and even less will ever be slowly transported in (by water flows) from other reagions (with little/nothing being “up there”). This, among other reasons (such as temperature control in emergencies – climbing higher every 1000 meters results in 3-4 degrees C annual mean temperatures; such as generally much cleaner waters; such as natural barriers of mountain ranges to serve as security measure, etc) – is why i keep mentioning maountains and platous as possible targets for survivor societies. Mountains are very difficult in other regards, though – in particular, it’s difficult or impossible to grow that much food if the only thing under your feet – is rock. But then there are often valleys. All in all, mountains are definitely to keep in mind – specially those present global civilization has no use of.

Bottom line: in general, dangers of radioactivity are much hypertrophied in public opinion; main thing is that radiation is very “local” thing. Despite being invisible and undetectable without technical device, if one has basic knowledge about radioactivity, about how it works, where it gets, what are the most simple methods to avoid most of it, – it’s acutally a lesser of our worries. To complete this subject, let me remind you that cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand today, alive, despite being hit directly by nuclear weapons explosion each – and today, people live as close as hundreds meters from ground-zero of impacts, and it’s safe to do it; and let me remind you that since 1950s, the world has seen more than a THOUSAND nuclear explosions (weapon tests), some of which were megaton-scale weapons detonated near the surface, thus generating massive amoung of radioactive pollution. Granted, this was far from any population centers – but, well, if radiation would be as global danger as many thing it is, then by now we all would be ugly mutants. Well, those who’d survive the effects, that is.

2. Whole biosphere, eh? I wouldn’t be so sure. In subpolar regions (except perhaps Scandinavia, where the climate is much softened by Gulfstream and large ocean area all around), the climate _is_ normally very seemingly disruptive to life: something like -40 (some places, regularly below -60) degrees celcius, but in the same time, hot and arid summers (reaching 40th degrees celcius in shadow). Very short springs and autumns – in some places, as short as ~2 weeks. Huge variation in insolation amount which is there for any high latitude, too. As a result, parts of the biosphere which are in there – sub-polar and polar eco-systems, – are much, much more tough than most people think.

Two things which have any potential to kill _all_ of northern forests, taigas and tundras – are too much fire around, and draught.

Luckily, forest fires can’t burn everywhere year after year: once old-growth forest burns, this same place won’t be on fire (under normal conditions) for decades – before new big trees would appear. There simply wouldn’t be any much to burn there, and fire won’t spead across such areas. This formes “naturally happening” barriers to further forest fires spreading around. I suspect that in some 40+ years, much of northern forests will look like many-many srtipes and irregular areas of green forests separated by stripes and irregular areas of burned forests, as factors like nearby presense of swamps, rivers and lakes would prevent all-around 1-year massive mega-fires from happening. At least, this is how it is on west-sibirian plain i lived in: countless swamps, lakes, nameless rivers (there are truly SO many most were never given any name) – with patches of forests in-between. So fires, while still being very troubling locally, will not be a “death of everything”, i am sure (i’ve been in one as a child, was evacuated, at some point bus driver had to drive through completely thick smoke, seeing nothing – and i’ve seen it burning other time, quite up close).

As for the draught, – big luck is, much of higher latitudes, including most of Siberia and most of Scandinavia and much of Canada and Alaska – will be getting MORE precipitation total per annum as warming goes on. This is determined by PDSI projections for climates of up to +4 degrees C, done by professor Dai and collegues. Besides, it is quite obvious that with much warmer Arctic ocean, there will be MUCH more evaporation from it – and as a consequence, much more precipitaiton in higher latitudes. This effect most likely will much override faster evaporation from lands (due to rising temperatures) – because 1st, there were hot summers to begin with, 2nd, as summers become less arid, they’ll get softer – compensating much, if not all, of general temperature increase. So, while much of the rest of the world will indeed die (in terms of multi-cellular life) to scorching arid and draught conditions, – higher latitudes will get a massive additional potential for life: more water, more total heat per annum (due to greenhouse effect). And, you can see what happens when there are “more” of water+sun: near-equator areas (more heat than usual) plus lots and lots of water = jungles, which is the type of ecosystems with highest life content (per square meter of land) ever known.

To sum up my opinion on this one, – i am quite sure that not all biosphere will perish. “Trained” by ice ages and great extinctions of the past, some of modern-day high-latitude ecosystems are highly resilient to extremes of heat, frost, draught and flood (yearly floods of siberian rivers are immense – Ob, for example, in many places becomes so wide one can’t see the other shore of it; literally like a sea). Much of those ecosystems are untouched by modern men (nothing “useful” to “economically” get from there), and, provided that industrial civilization will go belly up long before going to exploit even half of northern lands (and i bet it’s going belly up soon enough), – this is where biosphere will survive. Humans, however, find it tough to live in those conditions even today (and in the past) – and it’ll be yet harder in the future. For centuries, Siberia was used by russians to send worst criminals to – practice not completely dead even today. This should tell how difficult it is to survive there in general. Will some humans manage to survive there or not while the rest of the world burns – is not possible to predict with certainty; but if proper effort is made, it should be possible, especially with much softer winters on some not-too-distant-from-Arctic-coast areas (which will eventually be as a result of massive warming of Arctic ocean).

3. I agree. Mars? Idiots! Underground cities? Man, those will die UGLY death, few months or years after main grids will shut down. >< But what i am talking about, – going north and/or mountains, regional lower-tech civilized self-sustaining locally societies, surviving on land cultivating crops in ways which do not destroy the land, – this is possible not just on paper. This happened many times in the past. It can be done in practice again – the only question is whether there will be enough willing people, sufficiently proper (effective for such conditions) social structure and order, and sufficient leadership and coordination to make this happen. I know that so far it seems there won't be. But, future is not set. If the only thing which separates the survival of human species and extinction of it – is said things (needed amount of coordination, leadership and desire to get involved) – then i say there is still a chance. It probably will take some BIG hits before things start to happen for real, though. Anyhows, here, call me optimist, if you want… And feel free to agree to disagree, if you want. Because, i am not convincing you – i am merely explaining my opinion here, without pretending for my opinion to be "the only proper truth", too.

4. True! Chance and luck is always a factor, sometimes more, sometimes less. Even something carefully built in secret in some edge-of-the-world valley noone ever mapped from any aircraft, separated by mountain ranges, without any roads into, and with real merciless local armed forces guarding the only possible "bottleneck" entrance to the area (thus able to hold the line as long as they have shells and bullets) – even such a location is prone to luck. Say, some rogue state at some point of big mankind collapse launches a single large ICBM, but fails to aim properly – and by a really bad luck, it heads for this valley… BOOM, no more valley.

That's why i keep saying mankind needs many of local self-sustaining "oases" of civilization. Can't bet on one, can't bet on two – we better have dozens, on all continents, of all possible sorts. Even if most of them won't make it (bad luck or whatever else), some few might make it through to below-peak of incoming thermal maximum. And by then, adapted to new harsh realities, having much knowledge of old global civilization to benefit from (from medical to Gaialogical – i like the term much more than "geological"), and free of competition of big mankind, then it'd be easier to go on. It's just to get past next hundred years or so which is really difficult and risky.

5. Please, pay a bit more attention: it was a thread i posted in, but not a thread i created (opened). Initial discussion was "highly unlikely" _and_ "very worst" scenarios there. I posted there initially on the subject of "very worst" scenarios i deem realistically possible (with what little knowledge i have, that is) – without much consideration how (un)likely they would be. But then the discussion there went off-topic; it wasn't about those scenarios anymore – be it "highly unlikely" or not; the link i gave is to the point of the discussion there at (and, after) which actual talk is not on thread's declared "official" subject.

And, in any case, words "highly unlikely" there were not mine, – thread's author said it, not me.

And to comment on your remark: ok, may be you're right, may be it won't happen. May be what few good souls are alive nowadays – will fail to get together, to run away, to hide good enough, and to survive the massive die-out of much of Gaia. Possible. But, again, does it really matter? Aren't we to try however we can to finally grow up and to learn how to live without slowly killing ourselves and Gaia? Those few of us humans who do understand this now – are we just to say "naaah, screw it!" and do nothing serious about it?

May be it'd be wise to just enjoy last days, i know. Stanislav Lem's "Futurological Congress". Aleksei Tolstoy's "Aelita". I know the idea. Yet, i guess it is in the nature of life to try everything possible in order to survive. (At least some) humans included.

6. Oh, sure, we in fact _are_ within 6th great extinction event of Earth already, i know. It'll get even much worse. Most of species gone, what few remaining have population in vast decline (possibly except few insects and bacteria). I already described above in this message in a bit of detail what i think will happen to (at least, some) siberian ecosystems, though: those will manage through. Certainly, with much damage (in terms of area occupied and in terms of species' diversity). But, much life should still be there, i think – some reasons to think so are mentioned above. Please do explain if i am mistaken there somewhere, and if i am – how and why.

And please, do not think that current extinction – is human's (mankind's) "fault". I am firmly convinced it is not; we were shaped to be – by natural evolution, signs of which are so many, – to be small-group hunter-gatherers. This is how our ancestors lived for millions of years. This is also how all mammals live for many dozens millions years – mammals in general are hunter-gatherers, one does not need much intellect to "hunt and/or gather" – even a pig and a lion does it. We were not adapted to wield intellect, but it developed. Laws of physics, man – those are to blame. However this universe appeared (or, was created, though personally i am an agnostic-type fella), – rules of physical world are such that quite _any_ sapient species would fall for "big traps", each leading to environmental degradation of increasing scale: 1st, fire, 2nd, money, 3nd, agriculture, 4th – burning hydrogen-carbon fuels in oxygen-rich athmosphere. There was simply not enough scientific power to prevent those at the time of happening, considering social structures and desires of majority of population at the time (natural desires, might i add; what's wrong willing to have good food, water and shelter for one's children?). So you see, if you want to blame something, – blame laws of physics, which shaped how we evolved and how it's possible to get more physical work (in watts, purely physical sense) by invoking certain methods which are – again, by physical laws – not available for natural ("blind") organic evolution. Using metals, controlling fires to achieve one-group-of-organisms' purpose, controlling other species (domesticating), you name it.

It frees one – at least, it freed me, – to realize that "man" is not "guilty" of killing this planet. See, would you blame a piece of rock which, by weathering, separates from a cliff, falls down into the sea – driven by physic law of gravity – and kills, say, a man swimming down there? I guess you wouldn't. Same thing with mankind: it's a "rock" which, by natural processes and laws of physics, kills much of the Earth currently. It's still much a blind force of nature. Lovelock and few others already realized that even our large SUVs are as much "natural" things as that beautiful tree: both are made by complex ecosystems from matherial present in Earth crust (even human body is in fact complex ecosystem, with billions inhabitants – "friendly" bacteria, all the various semi-autonomous cells of our own body, and "inanimate" structural parts – teeth, nails, bones, collagen tissues).

Oh dear, well, if you want to argue the case for radioactivity as ‘toxic sludge is good for you’, that’s up to you, yes, I was aware about all that about Chernobyl, although your personal experiences are interesting, but it has to be multiplied up by hundreds of times without anyone to do any any work to contain the pollution which will be spreading everywhere around the planet, through all the foodchains for thousands of years.

I already said, I expect some people will survive somewhere for a long time. But who would want to ? Under such severe conditions after the trauma of seeing civilisation collapse. Climate does not stabilise for tens of thousands of years, there will be no stable fixed environment anywhere for any culture to develop. The oceans will be dead, giving off clouds of toxic gas which drift across the land. The forests and phytoplankton will be dead, so eventually O2 will drop.

I completely disagree with your last paragraph. We have free will. Once we understood what we were doing we had a choice. An SUV is not natural, it’s a product of the human mind, a choice, which someone made. Henry Ford foisted that stuff onto us so that he could become rich. He funded Hitler and his autobahns so that there would be a market for his cars. He stole Harry Ferguson’s tractor design to sell the technology to farmers. All of that stuff was driven by politicians, bankers and capitalism, nothing to do with natural processes and physics.

ulvfugl sez: … I expect some people will survive somewhere for a long time. But who would want to? Under such severe conditions after the trauma of seeing civilisation collapse.

This comment goes to the heart of it for me. Even if nuclear and environmental Armageddon were somehow survivable, and I don’t believe they are but won’t bother arguing about it, those of us now living are not at all equipped to handle the very harsh new and constantly shifting reality. Too much loss and desire to return to the way things once were.

Regarding the canard that nothing on Earth is ever unnatural, I blogged about that here:

I assume you are familiar who the author of this book is; but please do not let his reputation and status to influence your opinion in any way. I am simply quite curious if this old man would perhaps make you think any different where i failed to.

F. Tnioli, I’ve followed his thinking from the start. Obviously he was a remarkable man and had remarkable insights, but he also made completely ridiculous bizarre statements sometimes, and now sadly seems to have become senile. I’m very happy to follow his thinking re Daisy World and Gaia and that’s very useful, to pose against Peter Ward’s concept of Earth’s history. Other than that, I don’t really have much use for his ideas.

I don’t know why you want me to think differently regarding radioactivity. Even if it is less lethal than I think, or more lethal than you think, so what ? It’s just one of a great many factors all of which TOGETHER contribute to an extinction event.

The main ones are the ones we can do nothing about, that is, the irreversible self-reinforcing feedbacks that Guy McPherson lists. In theory, we could dismantle nuclear plants, although nobody has any way to dispose of the waste safely. And there are other similar grave hazards, like bioweapons and so forth, which could also be dealt with safely if there was a political will. But there is no will to do so, anymore than there is a will to cut CO2. That’s what kills us all. The fact that it is too late and nothing will be done, and then there will be war, and total chaos.

If you WANT to imagine the possibility of survival, please do so. I am not forbidding you to have that idea 🙂

Yes, thank you; we both seem to respect each other’s opinion enough to be abel to agree to disagree without any difficulty, in cases where we can’t find a common ground.

To clarify few bits:
– sure thing, i want to imagine how human species would be able to survive. Without thought, there definitely wil be no action; imagining a working solution is a required step (although, of course, not a sufficient, not a complete, measure by itself). However, i do not want to imagine something practically impossible. I want to find something which would have chances to work in practice. I don’t want to delude myself, if that’s what you meant. Ain’t no “dreamer” for its own sake: i do not do it for my own psychological comforts, that’s for sure;
– “nothing will be done” – by current elites and big powers, yes, nothing of truly required sort of action will be. They will be doing, – and are already doing, – many things to extend the agony of the system, though. Which in my opinion is more harmful than useful in terms of survival of our species long-term. However, my point was and remains that may be some significant things will be done NOT by current elites and big powers. Groups of relatively not-rich people, type #1, may at some point move out and settle up there, far north, without much ado or publicity. Much like two boys in the short story of the 7th voyage of Tichy, perhaps it’s not “powers” that be, but some “insignificant at the time” people who will manage to do what’s absoluetly nesessary in our current situation? You can read the story – apart from learning in detail what i mean here, you’ll also have some good laugh – here: http://english.lem.pl/home/bookshelf/the-seventh-voyage .
– oh, what a pessimistic view! Radiation is a factor which will contribute to extinction. Man, are you serious? Do you know what are radiation’s effects on living beings when it’s well below quickly-lethal levels (and it will be many times below readily-lethal levels for vast majority of land even at peak of net total outbursting)? Most likely you forgot it, or something. Well, let me remind you, then, that non-readily-lethal levels of radiation is nothing else but accelerator of biological evolution. Organisms mutate under radiation. More radiation – more gene mutations. Being random, vast majority of those lead to inability to produce viable offspring. Some, however, lead to improvements – improve species in some regard. By this very mechanism, which is kept in place for billions of years by natural background levels of radioactivity, everything alive evolved. Humans included. So, more radiation – more diversity, faster adaptations, richer biosphere in the end (with everything else being the same). By this mechanism, radiation may actually end up _preventing_ otherwise very likely extinction of some species, isn’t this obvious?
– bioweapons? Gee. If you mean those will be used during the last moments of global IC agony – well, it might be, but will they spray things over some remote sub-polar regions where a some few settlements exist? What for? I doubt. And if you mean those will somehow leak out or spread around after proper maintenance and containment stops, – well, sure, can be, but with a large distance between sub-polar settlements i am talking about and other human-populated area, i do not see any bioweapon being able to easily “leap” across and infect remote settlements. One more reason to shoot visitors on site for remote settlement’s armed force, though… Sad. However, i suspect most if not all bio-weapons are kept in forms which are not “active”; much like most, if not all, chemical weapon components are kept apart, and the actual combat-ready substance is prepared only shortly before use, and only in quantities which are known to be needed. Honestly, i don’t know why you think bio-weapons would be any major factor, man. >< 😀

I think that is an absurdly over-simple understanding of the effect of radiation upon genetic mutation and evolution, it’s on the level of Monsanto’s ‘science’, but it’s much too boring to argue about.

Re the bio-weapons. In Uk, and I assume likely even worse in USA and Russia and China and Israel and elsewhere, they keep all animal and human diseases, and all sorts of insane germ warfare concoctions. Your concept of safety in isolated sub-polar settlements – where, presumably, if they are habitable, there will be much fighting and competition to be able to live – is not going to work for diseases that are carried by migratory birds or gnats and midges and mosquitoes.

They have diseases which are genetically tailored to kill off particular genetic types of humans and all kinds of crap. Anyway, I’m not interested in arguing about it. If you want to see the bright side of all this, and hope to survive, that’s fine by me, no problem, I simply don’t care, it makes no difference, I’m not trying to change your mind about anything.

What I’m saying, is amongst the many, many other hazards that will make life almost impossible, there will be the junk left over from all the disgusting messes from the military and the nuclear industry and other industry, toxic chemicals, bio-hazards, radioactive materials, etc, etc. Nobody is going to deal with any of that, and in 100 years time, nobody is going to have any idea what it is or how to deal with it. If there’s anyone around they’ll just notice that their skin has started falling off, whatever. No amount of being hopeful and optimistic and ‘will to survive’ is going to be of any use.

Sorry, I don’t have time to read and consider a book of 250 pages plus back matter. My familiarity with Lovelock is quite minimal. I can’t argue the specific scientific details with Lovelock or other specialists. My sense as a layperson, however, is that the big picture formed of quite a lot of those details is exceedingly negative. I’ve gathered a lot of those details, but as I point out in my blog post above, I am more interested in the cultural sphere and may be suffering from confirmation bias.

I’ve read more than a few hopeful scenarios from the likes of Lovelock, E.O. Wilson, and McKibben, but in truth, such thinking strikes me as nothing more than wishfulness of the never-give-up, for-god’s-sake-don’t-admit-the-obvious-truth-lest-a-panic-be-sparked variety. Closer to my own character (pessimism, misanthropy) is John Gray, who in is book Black Mass critiques utopian dreams (not specifically of the environmental type) and argues that Western religious dogma is underlain by an apocalyptic cult that invites carelessness with our stewardship.

A melanoma is natural but a mistake. Its unending and pointless growth does untold damage to the disciplined cellular architecture from which it escaped. In the end both the cancer and the body die, naturally. I suppose that if the inhabitants of malignant cells could learn and build analogs of reality, they would quickly become technological and even more quickly metastasize throughout the body while consuming all available glucose, celebrating their cleverness and good fortune along the way. In the end, like mirages in the desert, their delusions would lead them forward with a final bio-engineering project to save the body they have just ravaged and destroyed.

What happened to the few cellular components that said, “We must become benign and live with the other cells, before it’s too late.” Some returned to the body to live within the disciplined architecture while others eventually abandoned their attempt to influence the cancer and instead prepared for the inevitable. Those that prepared lasted only slightly longer than the majority of cells before succumbing to the lack of oxygen and glucose and the build-up of waste products. No other sentient beings were there to arrive at the conclusion that malignancy was a natural occurrence amongst mature ecosystems for they too had all arisen and perished in the same manner.

Well, that’s an interesting take, James, and if you throw it at Lovelock and Lynn Margulis and other over-views of life on this planet, where everything is eating everything else, whilst competing and co-operating, what’s happened, is that over the incredibly long time frame, it all eventually found some sort of balance…

And that included US, as I see it, so long as we remained few in number and lived as hunter gatherers, because then we were still little different to bears or wolves or other animals, with a slot in the ecology.

But once we invented cities and agriculture we became something else, more like the social insects, and multiplied and swarmed, and then overshot the carrying capacity when we discovered that feast of coal and oil.

It took about 20,000 years for the Earth to warm 6 degree Celsius during the PETM. During the Permian, the final extinction and related warming events lasted about 165,000 years. In the case of the PETM, it is thought that volcanism in India stoked global warming until a rapid methane release over a 20,000 year spike period occurred. During the Permian, volcanism is thought to have burned through coal patches over a large region of Siberia, possibly eventually setting off similar very large methane pulses to those suspected to have occurred during the PETM.

In both cases, temperatures rose to between 9 and 12 degrees Celsius hotter than today. But, in the case of human warming, we have the potential to warm the Earth by as much as 7 degrees Celsius by the end of this century and, possibly, to Permian/PETM levels over the next 300 years. Such a rapid pace of warming holds no corollary in either the Permian, the PETM or during any other major warming event visible in the geological record of Earth’s past. So while we may look to the Permian for potential enhanced ocean circulation and anoxia impacts due to glacial melt and increasingly intense ocean stratification, we have no rational means by which to determine how far behind increasing temperatures and glacial melt such events may arise. In the case of the Permian, it took about 165,000 years for a Canfield Ocean to arise. But anoxic ocean states emerged and intensified as warming ramped up. So it is likely that ocean anoxia and stratification will become an increasing problem as the Earth rapidly warms due to human forcing. We can also expect glacial melt to amplify the problems caused by anoxia by increasing stratification and by pushing warm, oxygen-poor waters toward the ocean bottom where they have little opportunity to recharge oxygen stores. Lastly, in the worst case, we can look for Canfield Oceans as a potential tail-end risk for human warming, especially if global temperatures approach 9 to 12 degrees Celsius above the 1880s average and if very large fresh water pulses from glaciers shut down and reverse current ocean circulation.

Ugh, and, about who would want to survive under “such severe conditions”. Why, many would. Did you ever have your self-preservation instinct triggered? The thing is damn annoying, and, sadly, impossible to get rid of.

Say what, may be watch and listen to songs in this one; most humans, once threatened by death for real (no jokes), – like soldiers in war, – are least willing to die than ever.

Yes, that’s all very romantic, but I don’t think it will be anything like that.

Small groups, like mesolithic hunter gatherers, of about 150. They needed huge territory. More than 200 square miles. And that was when there was plenty of wildlife still. And they all knew everything they needed to know since early childhood. Where to be on what day, to catch the eels or the ducks or the deer. And how to read the weather and the seasons and how to know where the sheltered places were. Because they had learned over many generations. They knew how to make everything they needed from what was around them. There are no people like that. Everybody I have ever known in my whole life, with about a dozen exceptions, will be dead in about three weeks without civilisation to support them.

Sure, there are young, resourceful, tough people who will find themselves in a lucky place, who will find a way to survive for a long time. But they won’t even know about anything going on elsewhere, they won’t even know which way to go, if things are bad. There will be no communications or information. Eventually, everything will be lost.

It’s like going back to pre-agricultural times, but with a devastated planet, none of the resources that they had last time and none of the knowledge they had last time.

There is much evidence to support the aquatic ape theory -lack of body hair, subcutaneous fat, shape of nose, ability to cry salt-laden tears etc. -and it has been conjectured that our ancestors went through a semi-aquatic phase before returning to a more terrestrial habitat.

The capacity of humans to live other than above was largely a consequence of the ability of humans to utilise various components of the bodies of large mammals; fur skins to keep warm, bones to make tools and weapons, meat as a source of protein, blubber as a source of energy. Presumably, the need to control body temperature via other animals skins led to the cultural norm of clothing (though there are other theories relating to that matter).

There has been considerable discussion about the ability of humans to survive the meltdown of present economic arrangements and the meltdown of the environment by shifting towards the poles; this has been on the assumption that other regions will be too hot -a wet bulb temperature above 35oC for more than a short time being lethal.

Obvious questions that need to be asked and answered are:

1. how well will humans survive the extremes of temperature (near continuous day followed by near continuous night) ?

2. with most of the large mammals that made life in polar regions possible in the past now exterminated (or very close to extermination), what will people living in such regions eat?

Even in relatively warm locations such as Britain, the near-extermination of wildlife over the past millennium poses a considerable ‘challenge’ to those who survive the collapse of industrial arrangements (assuming nuclear contamination does not become an issue).

I watched the links to the methane tracker interface. Cool program using Google Earth as a data base support framework to graphically display tons of data points in an easy to understand GUI.

After playing with it and zooming in on different continents, I had a few surprises.

(it works much smoother with a really honked out computer, I used a friend’s tricked out video tower and it rocked)

Anyways, I was amazed that Australia had very few methane release areas, and South America, except for the high deserts of Peru, Bolivia and Chile with just a wisp in Venezuelan, and Africa below the Sahara had very little methane out-gassing.

The Big shock was Antarctica.

Can someone put forth a good theory on why there is such a massive methane venting there?

You may find some speculation at Sam Carana’s methane hydrate blog in comments and at neven’s forum, but afaik, the answer to your question as to the exact source of Antarctic methane, or the explanation of those yellow patches if it is some sort of artefact, because it seems very odd, is that nobody knows, and, like you, I would like to know 🙂

There’s also the Qinghai Tibet Plateau to consider, which has similar vast quantities of clathrates beneath permafrost, a bit like the ESAS, which have remained frozen there for a very long time. But now, as the glaciers melt and climate changes, what may happen, instead of snowfall, it will rain, and then warm water will seep down, melting the covering of permafrost and reaching the clathrates, which in some cases are some few hundreds of feet below the surface and several hundreds of feet or even thousands of feet thick, from what I could gather reading the literature, which is mostly from Chinese surveys. One report mentions finding a clathrate deposit large enough to supply all of China’s energy requirements for 90 years.

If there’s any actual reason to support the notion that there are methane hydrates that can exist outside the stability region — that’s big news for the chemists and physicists and someone will document it.

If not, it’s scary big round numbers.

[Response: Hear, hear. – gavin]

Hank Roberts and Gavin Schmidt floundering around….

However origin of gas and the form of its existence within permafrost was not completely understood until now.
Shallow large gas accumulations are of special interest because they are situated in sediments having high
specific water (ice) content and are probably related to
the gas hydrate form of gas existence. The cryolithozone is the thermodynamic region where hydrates
could be stored under non-equilibrium conditions due
to self-preservation phenomena. In this situation, gas
hydrates are in a metastable state and they are called
relict hydrates (being formed in the past under equilibrium conditions, they are now in non-equilibrium conditions). The self-preservation phenomenon extends
the thermodynamic area of gas hydrate existence to
the whole thickness of permafrost sediments and gas
hydrates and can be discussed as one of the permafrost
rock components such as ice and unfrozen water.
Gas hydrates, like ice, can form different textures in
permafrost sediments (cement, inclusions). Many physical properties of hydrate-containing sediments are
very similar to the properties of frozen (ice-containing)
sediments of the same composition. But the processes
of hydrate formation and decomposition in sediments
of different composition have been studied very poorly.

Seems that is the BIG NEWS for chemists and physicists that Schmidt, Colose, Archer have never heard of and been unable to find in the literature, although it dates back ten years and more, and if I can find it, why the fuck can’t they ?

It says that ancient clathrates can exist in certain circumstances when mixed up with sediments, etc. outside the usual boundary of temperature and pressure.

Something that has me a little perplexed at this stage is the density of methane-ice clathrates… presumably greater than that of cold sea water.

From what I understand the stability comes from hydrogen bonding of the water molecules (previously discussed), and that is primarily dependent on temperature.

As with most things, what happens outside the laboratory is often rather different from what happens in the laboratory. The future of the planet may well depend on our understanding of all this stuff, and yet there is apparently no concern anywhere except at the fringes of society.

Interestingly, the Arctic ice cover is currently a lot more than many were expecting.

The meltdown of the global financial system may well come before there is an ice-ree Arctic.

As with most things, what happens outside the laboratory is often rather different from what happens in the laboratory. The future of the planet may well depend on our understanding of all this stuff, and yet there is apparently no concern anywhere except at the fringes of society.

There has been a massive effort to discredit Wadhams, Hope and Whitehead and to rubbish their paper in Nature, and a similar massive effort to dismiss the work of Shakhova and Semiletov, and to censor Paul Beckwith, which has been quite shocking, disgusting and disgraceful.

Arctic ice cover now is not “a lot” more than 2012, though. It’s somewhat higher than 2012, not “a lot”. Actual sea ice area (note, not extent) is just a couple percent higher. And the quality of ice is unprecedentally low – unprecedentally much breaking, slushing, low concentration fields. Some people (including yours truly) are still expecting minimum extent (in September) to be on par or even slightly below 2012’s (me, i bet it’ll be some 90%…105% of 2012’s extent).

Total volume (and thus, mass) of Arctic sea ice in 2013 is so far significantly higher than 2012, so Arctic indeed has a lucky year so far. THe summer was relatively cold in much of Arctic ocean. But the differense is not anything dramatic; this year, volume (thus, mass) of ice is following, very close, 2010 levels (which are still much more than 2 standard deviations below the average amount fo 1980s).

We’ll see how it’ll end up this year; but the general multi-decadal trend is still there, pointing to demise of Arctic sea ice in mid-2010s or late-2010s. I don’t see any definite signs this year breaks it any substantially.

It is worth remembering where this dispute concerning methane and the ESAS began, two or three weeks ago, and what it was about.

Schmidt, on RC, is now claiming it’s all about a small technical issue regarding methane hydrates and how close they are to the surface or some such. But that in itself is somewhat disingenuous considering what he was saying at the start, and what the real issues are.

As Wadhams says, the hydrates are a red herring

First, it makes a complete red herring of methane hydrate, quoting Ruppel on hydrate stability, etc. Let it be noted: 50Gt of methane is only about 2% of estimated Eastern Siberian Shelf (ESS) total carbon, and would only be 7% of the free gas reservoir that lies under the hydrate layer. There are many possible gas migration pathways for methane excursions, from pingo-like structures, fissures, the taliks appearing more and more throughout the permafrost layer, slope failure, sediment or mudslides around the Lena delta, an endogenous seismic event along the Gakkel ridge, etc. Thus, hydrate is really not even needed for a methane catastrophe scenario at the ESS. None of the quotes, moreover, about hydrate distinguish between the exceptional situation at the ESS of very shallow waters and the hydrates elsewhere around the world, which are indeed mostly quite secure.

and Schmidt’s conduct toward Wadhams, a double Professor at Cambridge, and towards Shakhova and Semiletov, who are experts on the methane and the geology of the ESA Sea and adjacent areas, who have been visiting and studying there for more than 15 years, has been most extraordinary.

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